Swarm City Boardwalk Overview

Boardwalk
is Swarm City’s Minimum Viable Product. It enables users to create
requests and respond to them, and make and execute deals with Swarm City
Tokens (SWT). Boardwalk is where commerce begins in Swarm City, and
provides a simple, intuitive system for participating in Swarm City’s
peer-to-peer sharing economy.

Boardwalk will be released very soon, and with its release the Swarm City team will be ensuring that the basic concepts of transacting,gaining reputation, and using hashtags are performing well in real worldscenarios in preparation for Storefront, the third release.

Part 1: Basic Boardwalk Functionality

Enter Boardwalk

Users
begin their journey in Terminal, which they use to create their Swarm
City identity. Once a user leaves Terminal, they will find themselves in
Boardwalk. Boardwalk is where newcomers meet and get acquainted with
the city’s structure and citizens. It’s where the first relationships
are built, reputation gets minted, and the first deals are made.

The following is a visual tour of how Boardwalk works.

Hashtags are sorted and filtered by popularity and location.

Hashtags
are used to create a service request. The Boardwalk interface shows
popular hashtags based on a user’s geolocation. If a user clicks on the
hashtag, it will take the user to a list view of every offer and request
that has been made on that hashtag.

#Needaride as an example:

Clicking
on #needaride brings up a list that shows all incoming ride requests
for the user’s specific geolocation. In other words, this list will show
other users who are looking to hire someone to get from point A to B.
These are service seekers. In reality, Boardwalk is building on the
functionality that is already being successfully used today in Swarm
City facebook needaride groups.

Users
have the option of setting their preferred reference currency,
indicating the SWT value for each request in USD, EUR, ETH, or BTC.

To
create a new ride request on this hashtag, a user clicks the big plus
button in the bottom right hand corner. Then it’s as simple as typing in
where and when they want to go, and how much they’re willing to pay to
get there.

In Boardwalk, creating a request is as simple as writing what service a user wants.

The offer detail view.

On
the offer detail view, a driver can accept or respond with a
counter-offer by clicking on “Respond”. To get to this view, the driver
simply clicks on any ride request in the offer list view.

Reply view.

The requester gets a notification every time there is a reply to their offer.

When a driver responds to an offer request, a notification is received by the requester’s device.

By clicking the notification, the service seeker is taken to the detail view of the request.

Two drivers responded to the rider’s request.

The
seeker now has two service providers offering to settle the request.
The service seeker can click on either offer and make a choice. Before
choosing a service provider, the seeker can also check the reputation
and identity of the provider. (More on reputation down the page.)

Reply detail screen from a driver offering their services.

Then, the seeker chooses a service provider by clicking the accept button.

To
initiate the deal, both parties send the value amount of the deal in
SWT to a holding contract. The tokens can only be released once the deal
is successfully completed, or when both parties agree to cancel the
deal.

The reason why both parties send the deal amount to a holding contract is it prevents either party from spamming. If either party wasn’t invested in the transaction, they could decide to not show up, leaving the other party stranded. When both parties are invested in the success of the transaction, it creates a layer of trust between them

When initiating a deal, both parties send the same amount of tokens to a holding contract.

Once the deal is enacted, the seeker and provider can start chatting with each other to make more specific arrangements.

Making specific arrangements over chat.

After the ride takes place, both parties trigger the payout.

When the deal is executed, the requester and the service provider trigger the payout.

Part 2: A Deeper Look At Boardwalk

Boardwalk
is the expression of the Swarm City peer-to-peer sharing economy in its
simplest form. With Boardwalk, hashtag driven provider requests are
introduced, which will give individuals the ability to communicate with
each other, gain reputation, and transact.

By
watching how users interact with each other and the system in
Boardwalk, the Swarm City team will gain valuable insight on where
development, communication, and business resources need to be allocated
to fine tune Swarm City. It will also reveal the short-term growth
potential of the project.

Here
are some initial indicators the Swarm City team will be looking at: the
number of transactions, transaction size, type of transactions, and the
number of unique users.

The
goal is to make sure Boardwalk interactions are performing as designed,
and at the same time get a better understanding of the project’s
potential.

To give some useful context, here is the description of the first three Swarm City releases:

1. Terminal

Creation of individual identity and wallet.

Simple transactions with shortcodes.

Ability to convert ARC into SWT.

Development is funded by the Ether raised during the ITO.

2. Boardwalk

Basic peer-to-peer transactions.

Launch of first hashtag, and the ability to generate reputation on it.

Development is funded by the Ether raised during the ITO.

Transactions
will incorporate a mandatory tip that goes to the hashtag maintainers,
to fund support, communication, and conflict resolution for that
hashtag.

3. Storefront

A graphical user interface to efficiently request or offer a service.

First storefront to be developed will be rideshare; #needaride.

Development is funded by the Ether raised during the ITO.

Transactions
will incorporate a mandatory tip that goes to the hashtag maintainers,
to fund support, communication, and conflict resolution for that hashtag
(more on this below).

With
the Boardwalk release, the Swarm City team should begin to get a feel
for the long term promise the ecosystem brings. The big task at hand is
to provide enough value that Swarm City is used by as many people as
possible, transacting peer-to-peer. The more valuable the ecosystem, the
more value the token will have.

In fact, the value of SWT is the indicator
of how our users value Swarm City and the utility of its tools. It is
an actual representation of the value users are creating by using the
Swarm City ecosystem to transact, because each transaction is tied to a
good or service with no middle-party bloat.

With
the release of Boardwalk, the Swarm City team will migrate existing
active commerce groups like rideshare from facebook and other channels,
to Boardwalk. It will enable users like drivers to transact
effortlessly, with minimum, fixed transaction fees, which is in stark
contrast to the enormous percentage being charged by competitive
rideshare projects to cover the bloat caused by their hyper-centralized
model.

Though
they claim it so, that model is anything but decentralized. It’s bad
enough a large bureaucracy exists at the center of those organizations,
making blanket decisions for all users. But what’s worse is in order to
keep the bureaucracy alive, they do so by extracting value generated
from their community of users. This is value that could be used to
better the community if kept in the hands of those building it. In Swarm
City, value generated by a community member stays with that member.
Thus productive users will have more assets with which to keep building
better services; enriching the community.

Swarm
City does not need to charge transaction fees because the ether raised
during the token sale is sustaining development and startup costs.
However, a small fixed amount tip will be charged by users maintaining
each hashtag, which will be discussed a bit more down the page.

Any service provider can be among the first citizens of Swarm City gaining reputation and making money by using Boardwalk.

With
Boardwalk, we will start using our own tools to further build Swarm
City. In this way, we’ll create a continuous feedback loop from
development, to business, to users, and back to development.

The
Development and Business teams will use Boardwalk to post requests for
app and business development tasks. The Outreach team will use Boardwalk
to post requests for outreach tasks.

This
will ensure that the future development of Swarm City becomes more
decentralized. By posting tasks with a well expressed deliverable,
anyone can join in to help build Swarm City.

Here are a few examples of what development and business requests might look like in the future:

@scdevteam

“swarm city dev team needs iOS webview specialist for next release #SCdevelopment”

Part 3: Hashtags Explained

With the release of ‘Boardwalk’, Swarm Citizens will see the very first Swarm City hashtag: #Pioneer.

To begin with, all
transactions will be on the #Pioneer hashtag. Users can start
transacting on it immediately, which will have the added benefit of
creating reputation for them on that hashtag.

Any
user can join in transacting on the #Pioneer hashtag. Swarm City team
members will use it as well. For instance, if the Dev team needs system
testers, their request might look like this:

@scdevteam

“Swarm City dev team needs tester for the storefront release”

Offer: 200 SWT

#Pioneer

If the outreach team needs someone to do a talk at a crypto event, their request might look like this:

@scoutreach

“Swarm City outreach team needs presentation @blockchainafrica2017”

Offer: 1000 SWT

#Pioneer

And, if a user wants to request a ride home from the local pub, their request might look like this:

@janesmith

“Ride home from @coatofarmspub to 7th street, female driver only”

Offer: 25 SWT

#Pioneer

For
the near term, all commerce will take place on #Pioneer. The reason why
the first Swarm City transactions are limited to one hashtag is to get
Swarm Citizens used to navigating the interface, and hashtag owners used
to maintaining the hashtag (more on this in a moment). Early users will
forever hold reputation in #Pioneer, proving they were there from the
very start.

The
last phase in the Boardwalk release will be opening up the ability to
create hashtags to every user. In the meantime, everyone will get used
to using #Pioneer together.

Once hashtags are opened, how does it work?

Starting a new hashtag is as easy as setting up a Whatsapp group. Here is a very simple iteration of the interface:

A user taps the big plus button on the bottom right. It takes them to the new hashtag screen.

On
the new hashtag screen, the user names their hashtag. They also must
set a minimum mandatory tip. When users transact on this hashtag, the
tip is the transaction cost.

With
the tip, hashtag owners can make sure their hashtag is a clean and safe
space for users to do business, by creating support and conflict
resolution services. The better the hashtag is maintained, the more
Swarm Citizens will want to use it to do transactions and gain
reputation.

On
the next screen, hashtag owners enter a short description of what the
hashtag stands for. Hashtag owners can also enter contact information;
like facebook, twitter etc., so users know how to reach them.

Owners
can choose to share the tips with other users (and later Hives). Owners
will ask the person they want to invite for their shortcode. When the
owner enters the invitee’s shortcode and taps the plus button, a device
to device connection is set up, and the invitee sends their identity and
public key. If everything looks good the owner can confirm.

In
the next screen hashtag owners can configure the percentages each party
should receive. Every member of the hashtag maintenance crew can have a
different % of the tip.

That’s it! A new hashtag is ready to be used by Swarm Citizens.

Part 4: Reputation

This
section discusses the concept of reputation. The general understanding
of reputation is “what people think of me”. So when a person belongs to a
certain community in which peers know their identity, their actions and
interactions can contribute to or harm their reputation.

In
the real world, people belong to many different communities, and as
they move between them different rules apply based on the context of the
community. A certain behavior might add to a person’s reputation in one
community, but detract from it in another. Here are a few examples to
illustrate this point:

It’s
Friday night at 11 PM, and you’re at the pub having a drink with
friends. You’re speaking loudly, laughing, and telling jokes.
Everybody’s laughing along with you; even the people that don’t know who
you are, are laughing. The community is clearly enjoying your presence,
humor, and disposition, and thus they value you as a member. As your
value in a community increases, it positively affects your reputation.

It’s
Monday morning at 11 AM, and you’re at work in a staff meeting with
your colleagues and boss. You start speaking very loudly, telling the
same jokes you made in the pub a few days before. Your colleagues feel
embarrassed because what you’re doing is inappropriate for your
environment. Your identity did not change; your behaviour did not
change. The only thing that changed was the context of your environment.
And in this context your reputation drops because the community does
not value your behavior.

When
you arrive at the pub again next week, the patrons all recognize you
(identity), and your reputation precedes you. Some of the people that
were there the last time start talking to you. Your friends look forward
to meeting up again because in the context of the environment your
interactions take place in (the pub), they enjoy their experience with
you (behavior). If this same group of people experienced your behavior
in a different context, they might not enjoy it as much.

Reputation is the sum of an identity’s interactions in a specific context.

So, how do these concepts get integrated into a virtual city? It begins with identity,
which has been taken care of with the release of Terminal. In Terminal,
a user’s identity is attached to their wallet and public/private key
pair. As for interactions, in Swarm City those are called transactions because an actual transfer of value takes place in each interaction.

In
Swarm City, just like the real world, a transaction is the transfer of
value from one identity to another. With every successful
transaction in a specific context, reputation is gained. If a
transaction is unsuccessful, no reputation is gained.

In
the pub, a patron would ask someone “Do you know this guy? He seems
funny.”, and a peer will talk about how funny he was last week. People
in that community will verbally vouch for him with their reputation.

In
Swarm City, reputation is recorded on a public blockchain, so there is
no need to trust a peer’s opinion on whether someone is funny or not.
Anyone can just check their reputation for themselves; it’s expressed by
a number. Here are the above concepts broken into simple bullet points:

Identity = ethereum public key

Context = hashtag

Transactions = transfer of value

Reputation = sum of transactions in a context

Reputation on a Hashtag

A
hashtag is a smart contract that stores reputation. When a transaction
occurs in that hashtag, reputation gets released to each party. Each
party’s reputation balance represents the reputation of that user in that hashtag only (in that context).

To
be accurate, reputation on Swarm City hashtags is its own token, but
the token is worthless relative to Swarm City Tokens, coins, and
currencies. Their only value lies in their creation story. They can only
exist because the owner did a successful transaction in a particular
hashtag. A user’s ownership of the reputation token proves they
participated in a successful transaction.

Visual Layer

The visual abstraction layer is how most people experience Swarm City. When a user wants to get to know
someone else, all they have to do is tap on that person’s identity.
This brings up a simple screen that shows their reputation balance on
every hashtag attached to their public key. A user can choose whether or
not to interact with them based on their reputation in a context
(hashtag).

Public
information associated with transactions is stored on Ethereum’s public
blockchain. The goal is that Swarm City users have the ability to seek
out interactions with other users who have a reputation score that’s
acceptable to them. And by using the Ethereum blockchain, reputation can
be public and irrefutable.

The
caveat is, users can only see identity information when it’s attached
to a service request. So, when a service seeker posts a request, anyone
searching the hashtag the request is made on can see the seeker’s public
identity. And once a service provider responds to the request, the
provider’s identity can be viewed. Identity information is only saved on
an individual’s device, not on any central server, which means their
information is only viewable when they interact via request.

Conclusion

Boardwalk
is an exciting step for Swarm City; one that gives users the ability to
communicate, transact, and build reputation with their peers in a safe,
trust-less, decentralized way. It’s where the the initial vision that
inspires Swarm City becomes reality.

If you would like to know more, or think you are a great asset to the Swarm City team, please say hello on Slack.

Follow the development process on Swarm City’s Github. In a future post, the dev team’s methodology and process will get further explanation.